Releases
Dylan LeBlanc - Paupers Field Instores August 24th
Rough Trade Records are excited to announce the release of Dylan LeBlanc’s debut full length, Paupers Field, which he worked on with Grammy award winning engineer Trina Shoemaker in Nashville.
The songs on the debut are beautifully nurtured, gently astonishing, stop you in your tracks reveries – gilded with strings, smokey organ lines, and keening pedal steel.
Despite his age (20 years old), Dylan’s worn yearning voice already has the mark of aged experience. Neither the feel nor sound of the album, nor the haunted ghost summoning songs he has written, can be faked. ”If Time Was Wasting” for instance, seems to be wrenched from the heart of ever present currents in Deep South life – where the pull of the past is unavoidable.
Dylan LeBlanc was born in the Parish of Caddo in northwest Louisiana. He was exposed to a wide variety of music whilst growing up in Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Inspired by Willis Alan Ramsey, Neil Young, Townes Van Zandt and Tennessee Williams, he joined the House of Fame as a writer at 18.
Dylan’s approach to music is to write and sing about things that are real, that convey humanity, so all can relate. His inspiration comes from experience, and watching, listening, and absorbing everyday life around him.
Dylan will launch his frst North American tour this fall.
Available on US import digipak CD and LP, vinyl pressings feature a complimentary MP3 download coupon.
- Check out www.dylanleblanc.com where you can see his new video for “If Time Was For Wasting” and to download MP3.
“The Shreveport native’s got a great voice, older than his age with just a touch of a southern accent, but without the gruffness that people usually expect when you say “this kid sounds older than his age.” In the one-sheet LeBlanc mentions drinking a bit while writing this song, and the video shows him smoking, so
that voice may be ruined in a few years, or ten times better.” – Stereogum
“Swaddled in reverb and distinctly mournful in demeanor, singer-songwriter Dylan LeBlanc’s high, lonesome folk songs will send Ryan Adams fans into paroxysms of delight.” – Spinner
“Dylan LeBlanc, a 19-year-old lad from Louisiana headed to SXSW with the ink on his Rough Trade record deal barely dry. His heartfelt Americana, which owes much to Neil Young and Jim James, is blissfully pure.” – Spin.com
On Dylan LeBlanc’s debut album, Paupers Field, a lost world is brought to life – both in the carefully sculpted songs and rich well of country soul from which those songs emerge. Although the Golden era of Alabama’s fabled Muscle Shoals sound had passed by the time Dylan was born in1990, his ancestral roots and family background connected him to one of the most significant sources in the rich tapestry of American music. His father’s position as a Muscle Shoals session player and songwriter meant that early in life Dylan was privy to the sights and sounds of an unvarnished, vanishing epoch and such legends as Spooner Oldham.
“I grew up around a lot of the session players. When I was 11 or 12 I would watch and ask a lot of questions, so for me it was like going to music college,” is how the tall, gentle voiced, lank haired Shreveport, Louisiana native remembers it.
“It seemed like a much simpler world – it was romantic to me the way everyone sat in a circle and took it from the top, they just played and hit the record button. That’s the path I followed when I made this album.” This music is in the blood.
“For me music is about getting together with a group of people who feel like family – you create a bond, feeding off each other. Just a look or a hand gesture and they know what you are talking about.” Dylan’s progress was natural, organic – learning the ropes working as a sideman, helped define his own world view and artistry through his teens. A friend of such celebrated local outfits as Drive By Truckers, LeBlanc piggybacked on no-one. Paupers Field is a singular record from a singular performer.
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